Slashdot Mirror
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
gobbo writes "The buzz amongst my Muslim acquaintances is that the al-Jazeera site is under "cyber-attack." Shortly after posting photos of mangled Iraqi children the server became unavailable. I don't have satellite TV to see if they are reporting anything on al-Jazeera itself, but pinging their name servers fails too. For those who don't already know, the al-Jazeera channel is a pan-Arabic satellite TV channel out of Qatar." While I am certain many h4x0rs are political, I can't help thinking that script kiddies are like moths to the flame of rising page views. (this was initially posted incorrectly, and has been moved to the proper date)
How is it that any story on Slashdot can survive without any comments at all for nearly 24 hours? Is the system broken? This is unusual!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
you can find it here. It's been hacked, but should come up shortly I bet. However, their controversial footage which is probably what you are looking for, is not available there. It's not available anywhere else due to heavy censorship, so you may have to check your favorite P2P network. Searching for 'jazeera' brings up some interesting results.
BTW, we've all heard claims that P2P networks are only used to steal music, movies, etc. This is about the first good example of P2P being used for a valid cause - to share news and avoid censorship. (aren't we supporting freedom of speech after all?)
Jobs? Which jobs?
More on this here
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
aljazeerah.
Australia's ABC (TV, I suppose) has reportedly
cropped the portion of a picture of a young
girl's feet, which were to be seen dangling,
after apparently having been blown loose by
an explosion, in the ongoing Irag war.
The report of this "editting" the gore away,
to make a photo more acceptible to Australian
viewing audiences, as well as other revealing
aspects of media censorship, were mentioned on
this morning's Media Report, now available via
audio-on-demand, in RealAudio format, at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/audi
This 27 March program included British photo-
journalist Tim Page talking about this kind
of selective reporting & sanitizing of war
images, eg, from Vietnam to Iraq.
Come back in about a week for the transcript,
eg at URL:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/st
War solves nothing... unless, of course,
your company is selling to Defense...
Al-Jazeera's pretty interesting. I've been watching it for about 3 years now. My Arabic isn't stellar, but I'm able to keep up with it pretty well.
Before the current war, it was a lot like a cross between CNN, with news & comentary, and Discovery, with documentaries.
It has an interesting history. As I understand it, the prince of Qatar funds it, but leaves it in the hands of the station to do all their own editorial control.
It definitely had an Arab point of view, but to me that makes sense. Looking at it from that point of view, I would almost say that it is fairly balanced. Just as an American would probably find CNN fairly balanced.
They don't hesitate to put Americans on (translated - unless you're former embassador Dennis Ross - he showed up on a debate show and handled it all in BEATUFIUL Arabic!). Rice and Powell have both been on there, but so has Saddam, and Tariq Aziz.
Is there an anti-American slant? Well, even though few Arabs like Saddam and his regime, very few are very keen on the idea of a superpower coming in and taking out an Arab regime. The whole region has an unpleasant history of colonialism and occupation, and for many, this just appears to be another chapter in it. A lot will depend on how we handle the post-Saddam iraq.
Another thing that is interesting... it's not a new thing that they're showing dead bodies and such. For as long as I've watched, they've not had a probelm with showing dead Palestinians or dead Israelis in that conflict. They don't talk over it either - sometimes just several minutes of showing what is going on or what has happened.
So, I've rambled on, not really answering your question, but I don't often get to talk about Al-Jazeera.
"Are you going to post the pictures of the people Saddam has murdered, tortured, and gassed during his 25+ year reign of terror"
No, those pictures are available to anyone able to type `halabja` into google. Mind you, they`d find out a little bit more about the wonderful US government if they typed in `halabja rumsfeld`...
The other day when loading up slashdot (like I've done everyday for years) /. for place to purchace PeacePinsso I
I noticed an add on
went out of curiosity and saw "We help fund anti-war organizations
like EndTheWar.org" EndTheWar.org This site is truely disturbing,Using the
Al Jazeera photos of young kids with their heads blown off for propaganda.
After doing some more digging on just who these people are I found links
all over the place for WPK (workers party korea) led by General Secretary
Kim Jong il and International A.N.S.W.E.R. headed by Brian Becker who just
with a simple google searchshows up ties to WPK. Other more disturbing things that
I do not want to say because this was a few days ago and I cannot provide
links until I get access back the machine I was using at the time.Feel free to
look it up yourselvs you may find something I didn't.
I hope slashdot will pay closer attention to who's adds they are promoting
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
From what I understand, the Al-Jazeera channel is available unencumbered off of some satellite, so given $200 worth of hardware (I'm sure many satellite junkies have the necessary hardware) their news content is readily available.
I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.
Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.
I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.
Link: ... You can add the Iraq Satellite Channel to your 500-channel universe with a little tinkering. Iraqi television is rebroadcast onto the Net by the Dutch service DSL-TV, in both Real and Windows Media formats. The catch is that unlike ish.com's Al Jazeera stream from Germany, DSL-TV tries to limit its service to computers inside the Netherlands as part of its terms of service...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I just want to state right now that I am an American and recognize that CNN, especially as of late, is little more that an outlet for propaganda. The 'patriotic' stories get huge press, while those that point out potential problems are glossed over and presented with such a slant as to minimize damage. I have stopped using cnn at all for news since their coverage of this situation began. I guess being 'unpatriotic' is jsut too dangerous. I am ashamed of an America where expressing a dissenting view is called unpatriotic...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
While other people have posted links to various sites that are hosting images and the Al-jazeera news feeds and images, I decided to mirror the news feeds as an attempt to help move these feeds to people who are curious about the hype circling this situation, but unable to see it in the news.
I've rarely been moved like this situation moved me. After reading about these Al-jazeera clips showing dead American soldiers and captured American POWs, I wanted to actually see them to see if the hype matched the furvor. They aren't completely gruesome, but they definately show that this war won't be a week jaunt through the Middle East.
I don't mind having the news censored for security reasons, but when the rest of the world can view these clips, and Americans can't, my whole opinion of the situation changes.
Posted anonymously. Mod accordingly.
Try reading British, Australian or Canadian media on the net for a few days. Or watch the BBC 24/7 news tv on the net.
I do, and Foxnews and CNN look like 24/7 Pentagon infomercials in comparision to serious media.
From reading the comments, I've realized that few Slashdot commenters know much about the history that leads to the present war in Iraq. So, here is a very short recounting. The details given here have been reported by many reputable news sources. There seems to be no disagreement about these facts.
All the actions by the U.S. government mentioned here were largely hidden from U.S. citizens. United States citizens paid the bill, but were mostly unaware of what their government was doing. Even though the U.S. government is presently at war with Iraq, only a small percentage of Americans can find Iraq on a map. It is said that a high percentage support the U.S. government's war in Iraq, but this is a blind kind of support that does not mean that there is comprehension.
Thread 1, Iran: Hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very brutal toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iraq overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence to come.
People in Iran began supporting terrorism against the United States, in retaliaton for hidden U.S. government interference with the Iranian government.
To counteract Iranian support of violence against the U.S., the U.S. goverment began supporting and encouraging Iraq in a war against Iran. This was very profitable for U.S. weapons manufacturers. Weapons manufacturers in the U.S. were delivering weapons to Iraq under long-term contracts up until the same month as the U.S. began war on Iraq the first time.
April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq, encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. She said,
"I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." [my emphasis]
She also said, "I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. [my emphasis]
Here is a complete transcript of the meeting between the U.S. ambassador and Saddam Hussein. (http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspi e.html)
Ambassador Glaspie acted on instructions from Secretary of State James Baker, as she said. Later, she denied knowing that she was encouraging war. (Mr. Baker is a friend of George Bush and was later White House Chief of Staff.)
It is not known why the U.S. government would support Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. However, in the meeting mentioned above, April Glaspie said, "We have many Americans who would like to see the price [of oil] go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states."
The fortune of George H. W. Bush was heavily dependent on oil profits, and Texas is an oil-producing state. If the U.S. government is successful at gaining control of Iraq, profits for some companies in the U.S. will increase enormously because Iraqi oil will be sold directly to U.S. companies, rather than to Turkish companies, as it is now.
Thread #2, Afghanistan: There is a huge amount of oil in one of the countries inland from Afghanistan. However, the only good way to get the oil to people who would buy it is to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. The Soviets wanted to get
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
Al Jazeera is based in Qatar. We did not bomb anything in Qatar.
So, what was that line of crapola again?
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
It looks like it's just a "special edition" site devoted to war news only, and I'm not certain that it's officially run by Al Jazeera. I don't speak Italian, and effectively neither does Babelfish. :-)
If nothing else, though, they have lots of images which help to fill in the gaps left by other news media.
Note that it isn't spelled the same as in English - "i" instead of "ee".
http://www.aljazira.it/
As a European let me tell you this.
American media is not balanced. CNN feeds you lies and holds back the truth. They have a very obvious agenda, and are useless to me. I haven't seen any lies reported on Al-Jazeera, but they do of course see the war from an Arab/No to war perspective.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/
http://www.canada.com/national/features/iraq/
http://iraq.ctv.ca/
Pretty well balanced sites IMHO.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.